“What’re you gonna name him?”

“Lucky. ‘Cause he lucked out.”

Uncle Jack wheels from the room as I set Lucky, the black, muscular cat, onto the floor. The cone around his neck makes him look weaker than I know he is. Elise has put painkillers in his food so that he won’t feel the pain from the stitches on his face and over his head.

Rosemary saw Lucky trying to run away, looking a bloody mess, face hanging and foot shot to hell. She turned to me bawling and pointing at the heap of cat that my uncle just shot at with a makeshift slingshot, damn near killing the furball. Help him, Kevin, please! I picked up the animal, got in the car, put him in my lap and told Rosemary to go home. She obeyed me spinelessly – I’ve gotta tell her to work on that submissive attitude – so I drove as fast as I could to the nearest veterinary that I know of. A day later they give me a stitched and bound up cat and a nice bill. To keep Lucky doped up I’m also paying a pretty penny.

Now when I sit in my room, the cat sits beside me. When I sleep, Lucky curls up on my stomach, cone on his head and bandaged up foot. The cat won’t leave me alone. He won’t eat unless I’m sitting beside him. When we first got him he wouldn’t eat at all. I had to personally feed him the food, from my hand to his mouth, for him to know we weren’t trying to kill him.

“He’s so cute,” Elise says lovingly. She rubs his back. “Who’d’ve thought that you’d help a cat. Why’d you do it?”

Rosemary’s hand in this is unknown.

“Helping animals,” I mumble brainlessly. I don’t know what I meant.

“Matrimony.”

I am not alone.

“Something that the Church truly desires for two people. It becomes your vocational call, if I may.”

Before Mrs. Denson, we had Julianne Martin. She’s been on her own soapbox since her husband died seven years ago.

“It’s truly a beautiful thing, you two. Do you plan on having children?”

Elise shakes her head. She looks at me. I’m not paying attention. Any second now the Denson’s will be coming through the front door and I’ll see Rosemary. I can tell. There are pink butterflies all around the door. I also have my own butterfly now.

It’s a red one. It sits on my shoulder at all times and speaks to me.

“Children are the ultimate goal of a true, sacramental marriage.”

Julianne Martin holds my hand. Speaks in a low, scratchy voice soothing things about God and marriage and love and sacraments. It mystifies her. She’s a Martin. They’ve been here since Hapierton was founded.

On a hill. In the cold.

I am Kevin Panzer, nearly eighteen, and I live in Hapierton, a small, secluded municipality. Aside from Tiny, the waterfall, we have the river, a tributary off of the Mississippi. My mother was born here and left after college. She’d been bored. But grandma talked her into returning permanently after she had Elise. It wasn’t easy to convince both Mom and Dad, but Grandma did.

Hapierton is the safest city in North America. It’s been called that by every major survey. Safe. Good for kids. Perfect. Aside from our short stumbles into the real world and brief vacations, Jimbo and I have never left since our arrivals. We are part of an overwhelming majority.

“Why would anyone want to leave?” Julianne would ask. I’m not sure. But I’m not sure they want me here. Jimbo and I. We need to learn our lesson. Keep our toes in line. I listen to her, knowing, feeling it in my gut, that she’ll be dead.

The red butterfly whispers it in my ear.

I’m not sure how, though.

We are all here to be signs of God’s love.

“What about, like, the bad people? Like Saddam Hussein and, I dunno, Hitler. Are they signs of God’s love, too?”

“Well I don’t know, Molly. Do you think they are? I mean, assuming you believe in God.”

Philosophy is the worst class on my schedule.

Am I a sacrament?

“Well… I mean, like, I believe in God and yeah I know that we’re supposed to be signs of God’s love, but the psychos can’t also be signs of his love. They wouldn’t be crazy if they were, right?”

“Define psycho,” Mr. Baxter says calmly.

“I dunno… a psycho would, like, kill people, I guess. And think it was normal.” Molly shrugs and crosses her ankles. She sits next to me and loves to look at me and think I’m looking back. “Who’d want a psycho to be a sign of love? And the beauty God’s given us?” My fingers curl around my pen, itching to stab her in the neck and show her the beauty God’s given us all but only shown me.

“Well does God create the psychos?” someone asks behind us.

“He created us all,” a second student says.

“But we can choose what we want to become,” says the first volunteer. “So God can create us, but not the psycho.”

“What about people born crazy, though?”

Rosemary is on my other side and she’s quiet. I know she’s got a Bible in her bag – of all these Christian girls, she’s the only one who knows anything about the Bible. I know why she doesn’t speak up, though.

“People who are born crazy aren’t blamed for their nuttiness,” Molly says firmly. “It’s only people who act crazy, they’re the ones who’re screwed.”

Mr. Baxter loves these kinds of discussions. He always gets everyone riled up. He also picks on quiet students.

“Miss Denson? Why don’t you give us some input, you’re very quiet over there.”

Rosemary looks up and frowns, moving in slow-motion again. A batch of M&M butterflies lingers around her fingers, itching to get a nervous munch in.

“I’m not sure, sir,” she says.

“About what?”

“About whether God makes people who are crazy or not. I mean… insanity is relative, isn’t it?” her voice is so soft that the entire room is hushed just to hear her speak. She seems ashamed for having spoken. Well hidden behind her big hair.

“So then whether or not God made you crazy depends on who you’re asking?”

“Well, yes. Different people think different things about sanity and its source. I personally believe that we’re all born completely normal and are turned into whatever we become over time. Nurture over nature, I suppose. God does not make ugly. We choose it.”

“So crazy people choose to be evil and go against God?” Molly asks aggressively.

“In a way.”

“That’s not fair, though. That’s like saying that gay people turn gay when they’re born that way. Why would someone choose Hell?”

“They lie to themselves,” Rosemary says. Her voice has gotten smaller. She hasn’t looked at me, either.

“So, to you,” the first girl shoots, “gay people are sinners? And they’ll go to Hell for being gay?”

“Yes.”

“And they’re not born that way; they can control it?”

“Yes.”

Molly and the girl both raise their eyebrows.

“God wouldn’t make you in a way that would condemn you,” I say stiffly. “If he existed, I mean. It doesn’t make sense.” I’m defending Rosemary for the mere fact that I can’t stand seeing her squirm.

“It doesn’t say in the Bible that God hates gays, though, it’s –”

“If we called faggots Sodomites, then maybe it’d make more sense to you.” I got louder. Watch your volume. Molly ignores what I said and pouts about how God loves gay people as much as He loves all of us heteros. I couldn’t care less. Rosemary stares at her soft knuckles and sighs. She spoke a lot today. I catch her eye. Grin. She’ll smile back. She does.

I gave God the silent treatment, but he hangs his prime bait in my face. Is He luring me in or throwing her out?

Parties are no fun. New Years was boring. January is boring, too. Jimbo is upstairs, fucking this girl’s best friend, while she, Emily Parker, flirts with me. Flutters her eyelashes.

“Do you know, I, um,” she leans against me and pushes her arms closer so her breasts are pressed like pillows in a compactor, “have a chastity ring?”

“No.”

“Oh, well I do. But,” she holds her hand up. Shows me the ring. Takes it off. “You can be… my first.”

I know she’s lying. And even if I were, the girl’s probably been a tease for at least five years. Girls who tease a lot tend to have saggy cunts. Like they’ve been fingered by giants.

“First what?” I ask lazily.

Emily rubs her lips against my cheek, neck, shoulder, stops on my arm where she knows the tattoo is. Has a vague idea of where it is, at least. I take another drink from my can. Emily is hot. But she’s nothing to Rosemary. Every time I see a girl, I compare her to Rosemary. If Rosemary had run her lips across my skin, I’d have a boner so hard it’d burst through my pants. Emily is the pond I used to enjoy before I found the lake. Rosemary is the universe I dived into when I ran from Earth.

“Oh, yeah,” Emily must’ve thought she’d turned me on. She jumps over my lap, straddling me and touching my hair and thinking her boobs are turning me on. I close my eyes and imagine Rosemary, which is physically impossible. But it’s doing a good enough job. I can get through Emily’s fondling and stripping and grinding and even when she sucks my cock, I can make it. But putting Rosemary’s face on that of a girl who can get my entire penis down her throat isn’t easy. It’s like trying to see camel do needlework. The idea doesn’t make sense. The thought of Rosemary choking on my dick and still trying to look sexy is also foreign. She doesn’t fit into any of my fantasies, to be honest.

I ask myself what she thinks of when she reads the Bible. Does she think of me? Is it hard for her to place Kevin on Jesus’ shoulders? When she imagines people kissing, her idea of a serious sexual fantasy, does she see me kissing her softly, or does it not fit? Am I what Rosemary had been expecting? Am I even what she’s imagining?

Will this girl stop clawing my nuts?

Dead bodies all over the floor.

“Are you sure?”

The last thing I can remember before opening Rosemary’s window is a dead rat. Tons of them. Everywhere.

But before now.

“Are you sure there’s dead rats all over the school?”

Mom nods. Elise and I turn to the television screen. Weather guy gives his insight on the strange phenomenon. The relationship between social issues and a cold front: beyond me.

The last time I was in that hunting store, I turned to the bearhead that hid my knife and stared at it. I’ve never spoken to a head with no body before. After our conversation I went home and planned my evening. Tuesday night, someone went into the school and somehow covered it in dead rats, drowning the gym in dried blood. I saw it happen with my own two eyes, two pale hands killing each rat, but they weren’t mine because my hands aren’t that white. My hands were busy breaking into the hunting store, they were there too. I saw myself in the window as I smashed the camera, crashed through glass, and tore that bearhead from the wall between bathrooms. Took it home. Sat in front of it all morning, hidden in my closet. When we were done speaking I jacked off thinking about Rosemary.

Elise turns the volume up to hear the story clearly because I burped.

“Who’s that guy?”

My sister taps my shoulder and nods across the street, out the window. A man in a black suit and tie, dark shades, stands across the street.

“I dunno,” I say.

My mother steps over to the window and squints at the stranger. We can’t see his eyes, but I know he’s squinting back at us. Assess the enemy. I suppose.

“You noticed all these stiffs hanging around the block?”

I nod. Jimbo snickers and drinks from his bottle of Coke.

“What’s going on? It’s like we got the goddamn FBI invading this place.”

I shrug and shake my feet. Four feet, two pairs of legs, hanging over the back ledge of some store below. When we’re bored we loiter in places that typically aren’t watched too closely. Roofs are an example.

“Sometimes it feels like they’re only following me. Fuckin’ weird,” Jimbo mutters. I feel that way, too. I’m not sure if I’ve said this or thought it, but it’s true. “Man… sometimes… we’re fuckin’ persecuted.” He’s high. We were smoking reefer this morning, and I think he kept some for his own personal use later on; a few minutes ago, probably. “Dude, you know the Law.”

Jimbo and I look at each other. In the wake of Rosemary, beauty is inherent and my determined heterosexuality prevents my adoration for my brother. He slashes his hand against a piece of glass. I follow suit. Press together. Finalize brotherhood, yet again

James is my brother and my best friend, and we are never to turn on each other or leave each other behind.

Some after-game action.

Rosemary and her white skin, Rosemary and her big hair, Rosemary and her pink lips with butterflies to match.

“How is James? Was he glad that you won?”

I nod. I’m somber. Rosemary doesn’t notice, or at least she hasn’t said anything. Our fingers are intertwined, backs against her cold, foggy window. I climbed over after taking a shower so I wouldn’t reek of sweating giants. Though Rosemary smells like sweet lavender, she puts her nose to my exposed bicep, inhales my scent.

“You smell like my dad,” Rosemary says softly. She presses her hand onto my thigh as she leans against me. “Why are you so quiet today?”

“I’m normally quiet,” I admit.

“How is Lucky?”

“Doing well.”

Rosemary nods and, still keeping her hands attached to my skin, looks out the window, clouded by our body heat. She takes one hand and wipes away the blur.

“The stars are so beautiful tonight, Kevin. They’re all so stunning. I wish I were in space and able to fly through all that darkness to find a place where….” She pauses and looks down.

“What?”

“I am happy,” she says. “I’m very happy. Are you?”

“Am I happy?”

“Yes.”

“I dunno. Right now? Yes. Not normally, no.”

“Because you can’t tell your dreams from reality?”

“That’s one reason, yeah.”

Rosemary puts her hand against the glass and sighs. “My mother says you’re not happy. She told me I should pray for you so you can be happy, the way we are.”

“Prayer won’t make me happy. I’m happy being with you.”

She smiles a bit.

“I really like you,” she tells me in a small voice. “Kevin, you’re my best friend. I’ve never spoken to anybody this much. Nobody makes me smile this much. And you’re so interesting. Do you know that you’re interesting?”

I shake my head.

“To me you are.”

“You’re pretty interesting, too.”

Rosemary shakes her head again, like last time.

“When I’m with you, Kevin, I think about… I don’t know… I feel… it’s almost like some kind of pain. Deep inside. But it doesn’t hurt. It feels nice. Oh,” she covers her face sheepishly, “I sound crazy, don’t I?”

Pinks, in flurried wings, swallowing the room whole. Rosemary becomes small, the way she really is, as I press my lips against the corner of hers and expect an earthquake of sensations, only to know the slowest avalanche. I kiss her again and watch her expression change. Soon all that I am completely aware of has altered and now I just want Rosemary to say something.

This isn’t a dream. That’s all I need to know.

“I’ve never done this before,” Rosemary says quietly. “My mother and father do sometimes, but not me.”

“Do you want me to do it again?”

She nods as I kiss her again and she stops shrinking. In my mind, so distorted after years of unidentifiable wear and tear, she’s become a huge figure, but in my arms I can physically realize her. Her skin, under the brisk cotton shield of her mother’s, is smooth and water-soft, milky-white, bending and curving against any contact with my fingers alone; sharp movements punctuated by quick breathing and heavy gasps. I feel her hands, open and inquisitive, against my back, suppress the dark thoughts in the back of my mind that bring about that metal taste on my tongue. I’ve never tasted anything so sweet, not right now.

“Kevin?”

Rosemary stops my hand’s unguided excursion between her thighs.

“Are you alright?” she whispers, worried. “You’re sweating. And,” she moves uncomfortably, an automatic denial, “you were touching me.”

“I’m sorry,” I mutter.

“It’s… it’s alright. Did I do something wrong? I was afraid I would.”

“No. I touched you because I’m horny, that’s all.”

She tilts her head. I’m not speaking her language. “It was strange, Kevin. How did you know… I mean, why’d you put your hand there?”

The first time she seems ashamed. Abashed.

Wet panties and the neighbor’s bad son in your daughter’s bedroom at night.

That’s never good.

Jimbo and I smoke a fat one early in the morning. His garage is off-limits to his mother, who likes to pretend that he isn’t a druggie, and his dad is away on a business trip right now. Perfect hole. We sit on old lawn chairs.

“That Rosemary chick should come in here and take a hit,” Jimbo says to me calmly. I shake my head. In the blurry after-giggles of our high, Jimbo likes to get philosophical. I squint and rub my eyes. Desperate to clear out the visions of blood and torn body parts from last night, some real, some not. “You get any action off her the other night?”

“No,” I mutter. Violent wiggling and the redheaded boy, keep laughing.

“What’re you waiting on?”

“I’ve got Emily.” My comfort woman, dumb bitch.

“Hmm. She has a saggy cunt.”

“I know.” Rosemary is afraid to kiss me now. I make her body do weird things.

“And that ugly chick who walks around the block with her dog, Joanie – bitch has got herpes. You know that, right?”

“Yeah.” A philosopher once said, ‘Tear down this wall!’ before injecting his final gallon of silicone into breast, left. Kevin says hello.

“Good. Other night I saw Max in a room with that girl – came out lookin’ dead stupid and scratching his nuts. Next thing I know he tells me he saw her putting Valtrex in her purse. You think Valtrex is a suppository?”

I shrug. Shall I insert this pill into thy anus, sir?

“How come in the commercials for Valtrex, they’re, like, mountain climbing? And walking on beaches and shit? I thought it was for herpes.”

“It is.” Genital warts, sir? Or perhaps a go at my racehorse? In the butt? I believe so.

“What’s that gotta do with, y’know, hanging off a mountain?”

“I dunno,” I say honestly. Who said that? I’m not sure of anything. “Maybe they aren’t allowed to show a girl’s twat on TV or something.”

Jimbo looks at me, squinting seriously.

“I ain’t never seen a twat on TV, you know? Only tits. But you never see any dicks on TV, either.”

Permission to land, captain. “Maybe they think it’s graphic or something.”

He frowns thoughtfully. I shrug. I honestly don’t know what I know and don’t know right now.

The garage door swings open. The haze gets suctioned from the room in a swift flood of light. Three figures stand in front of us.

“See!”

Ms. Martin points angrily as Jimbo and I cough and sputter in the bright light. Red alert! Man the battle stations! Inform Sir Carebear!

“In their uniforms, too! No shame!”

Au revoir!

The sheriff, Joseph Barnes, stomps forward and yanks me to my feet. He shakes me roughly, throwing in a bit of excessive force, as one of the suits who’ve been hanging around the neighborhood steps forward to grab up Jimbo.

“You bitches called in the goddamn FBI?” Jimbo asks incredulously. We’re marched to the curb, men followed by a single, angry woman.

“They were smoking marijuana!” Ms. Martin cries irately. “Marijuana! In Hapierton! This is outrageous!”

A slurred catcall comes from my house. Uncle Jack is watching from his window and holding his exposed penis in his hand, clearly drunk as a sailor. The front door opens. My mom is coming out and stops when she sees her son, me, sweet Kev, lying on the back end of a police car beside his best friend.

“What’s going on?” she asks quickly. She leaves her things beside her car and strides over, looking horrified. “Kevin? Kevin, why – Julianne, what is this?”

“Don’t come closer, Ruth! Not one step closer! Your son was just caught smoking marijuana! Ruining, tarnishing, tearing our town’s reputation to shreds!”

My mom’s jaw drops as I get a pair of handcuffs slapped around my wrists, in a town where jaywalking is punishable by the fullest extent of the law. Uncle Jack begins screaming profanities.

The Denson door opens and Rosemary comes out, ready for school, expecting to see me. She notices the commotion and looks over, not daring to move more than her eyes and neck to see closer. Her mother sprints down the walk when she sees that unholiness is about.

“What is this!?” Mrs. Denson cries. “What are these hoodlums being arrested for!?”

“As of right now, drug possession!” Sheriff Barnes shouts.

“Please, sir, keep your voice down,” my mom moans. “This isn’t really necessary, give the boys a fine or –,”

“Oh, shut your mouth, Ruth! Your boy and James are Hapierton’s two foul monkeys!” Ms. Martin caws.

Dad is still inside, probably taking a shower. Otherwise there’d be a fistfight right now.

“Don’t talk to my mom that way,” I say stupidly.

Someone shakes me gruffly. Jimbo blinks and tries urgently to clear his head.

“They’ll be downtown,” Sherriff Barnes says after some arguing between the women. When I look up and see Rosemary’s genuine worry, I smile at her. Wink. She feels comforted enough to let her hand slide from her heart and take a breath. Far away, she still turns me on. Does my body dare arousal at a time like this? Jimbo and I are pulled up roughly (second charge of excessive force) and thrown into the backseat of the cruiser. Sherriff has to make his only criminals seem like criminals, nonetheless.

“These boys are goin’ straight into the slammer!” Sheriff says dramatically.

The man in the suit, one of the FBI-looking men who’ve been hanging around, steps back from us and goes to stand against a tree across the street.

“Who the fuck are those guys?” Jimbo asks me weakly. “I bet he’s the fucking snitch.”

“I dunno.”

Driven away from my home and family, this is the beginning. Rosemary watches me, wide-eyed and scared looking, but I grin and nod. Let her know it’s fine. Make her less worried. The less worried she is, the calmer I am.

But she’s crying.

I’m not too calm as we drive down the road, stellar heroes of the potheads in Hapierton and epic failures of the system.

One day in a jail cell beside my brother. Heavy breathing from across the cell – the only homeless found in town, beating off. Watching Jimbo seriously.

“Do you have to do that?” Jimbo asks.

Huff, huff.

“Am I turning you on, you whacky sonnava bitch?”

Fap, fap, fap.

“Yo! YO! BARNES! This dude is in here getting his goddamn ROCKS OFF! I’m gonna kick his ass if you don’t c’mere and make his jail time a little less ENJOYABLE!”

Jimbo is the one of us who can say he nearly became a prison bitch.

“Kevin! Oh, God, that’s so sexy!”

Emily giggles loudly. Holds my hand. Puts her fingers over my crotch. Goads all the other chickenheads into hanging around a criminal’s neck. But she isn’t any more dangerous than a fly in a glass jar. The one who can make differences is the quiet one.

“So I fucked his shit up!”

And his best friend.

English is in fifteen minutes. Rosemary sits alone and I haven’t seen where she is. I’ve got a guide, though.

“I’m going,” I tell Emily.

“Where to?”

“Pisser.”

“Ooh,” she tries to grab my crotch as I stand up. “Need company?”

“No,” I say. I sounded disgusted. I didn’t mean to.

The red butterfly on my shoulder flies towards a pink one that hangs in the air. They speak, or something like it. Dance with wings. I follow the pink one.

All around the school it flies, up and down, until Rosemary is visible to me. Sitting far from the normal basketcases who love to glare, she reads her book under a dying tree by the entrance. Rosemary knows

“Hey,” I say when I see her.

“Hello,” Rosemary answers.

I sit down, put my hand over hers and let the orgasm of our physical closeness radiate through my body and stiffen all my muscles. Her ethereal, inescapable lavender scent overwhelms my senses, and the sweaty, human stench that we all ignore, that Rosemary can’t help but notice because her house smells so much like an over-sanitized hospital, makes her close her eyes for a moment. Pheromones and sweet girl scent control our every move. We are robots. Without any more than an informal greeting, I want Rosemary’s skin against mine and some bodily outlet for our passion.

“What are you reading?” I ask calmly.

“Emma.”

Closer still, I reach around her and take the book from her hands. Written across a plain blue binding, are the words Emma, subtitled Goodman Christian Interpretation. I flip through the pages. No wonder Rosemary is so quiet in English.

She’s reading a book that’s been beaten by a Christian scholar.

“This isn’t the real version,” I say. Rosemary tilts her head slightly.

“What do you mean?”

“It’s a Christian version.”

“I know,” she says.

“Why’re you reading it?”

Rosemary shakes her head and mouths, “My mother,” and that will always be her answer.

Our closeness has gone unnoticed until I feel her shudder in the cold, a soft shaking under my chin, positioned closely by her neck. I bore myself into every crevice that I can to keep her warm and comfortable. I press my lips against her neck and feel her shiver.

“Kevin,” she says my name under her breath, the way she always does.

“Hmm?”

“That man is watching us. I think he’s taking a picture of us.”

Blood on my tongue again. I sit up quickly, turn around, see the suit standing there with a camera. I could cut somebody.

“Who the fuck are you people!?” I shout, hopping to my feet. The suit quickly departs, jamming a camera into his pocket.

My name is Kevin Randle Panzer, born in Vermont on a ski trip, conceived on an early spring getaway in Cancun. Firstborn son of Randle Panzer, the youngest in a large family, German and Cherokee parentage, and Ruth Panzer, née Zatarain, whose grandfather originated in the south of Spain, an Arabic Spaniard, and mother, born in Paris, France (although half of my mother’s family originates in Selma, Alabama, on a count of a remarriage and some illegitimate bastard children). My French grandmother’s family moved to Hapierton when it wasn’t as expensive (exclusivity was the big deal) and Grandma never wanted to leave. Elise is my sister, born fourteen months after me, to the day. We both take after our dad and maternal grandpa, being tall and somewhat brown, with sandy blond hair, so as to give the impression of us being almost grubby and blue eyes, rimming green. On paper, official business, Elise and I write white. In person, for flair – half Turkish.

I am the good son of Kemal Ataturk, save us from this theocracy good savior for I am hunted by your Saudi prince.

And save me my foreskin, good sir.

Lights out, dark on.

Bearhead speaks to me late at night. I now know, for real.

My name is Kevin Randle Panzer, and I have died in a coma from overdosing on Viagra before my twentieth birthday.

Closet open, heart out, I speak. It speaks back.

Open and escape.

It only says three words at a time. Open and escape. Or death to end. Then end to finish. Finally, escape to leave. I know.

Darkness wraps itself around my body as I let these disembodied words take over my mind. Pink butterflies leave the room. When the dark comes over and my senses are clouded, I am no longer Kevin, but Kevin, killing Kevin, the boy standing over dead bodies with his hunting knife and a strange taste in the back of his tongue.

Tonight I know where I am in flashes of black and light, tearing through the night. Slashing over and over, till it’s over. If I were interrogated, given a truth serum, I would not know. I do not know my actions, all I see are flashes. My life, a dream, the nights my life, I cannot tell.

Please, Mr. Western Ataturk, spare my sweetheart.

But now my consciousness comes back, formless thoughts take shape, and I stand, alone, amid bloody lampshades and blown out candles.

A figure comes from the next room noisily. I’m not afraid.

“You!”

The redheaded boy stares at me. He has blood on his face and hands and, in those hands, is a knife sold in the aisle behind where I stole mine.

“Why’re you here?!” the boy asks me.

“Why’re you here?” I repeat calmly.

He stares at me, mouth agape and expression severe, before breaking out into hysterical sobs. Holding his face, drops the knife, babbles in goo-goo spit and saliva. I don’t get closer.

“I can’t stop!” the boy cries. In the mirror I see myself, covered in blood, and so is he. What’s going on? “I can’t stop killing people! You totally fucked me up, man!”

I am the blame for his mortal sin? What a shit. He won’t be the last.

“Dude, this ain’t even cool!”

A red butterfly drifts into my frame of vision, flutters its wings, kisses my nose and flies away. We’re not safe here.

“Where’re you going!?” the redhead asks as I walk from the room, going out an open back window.

“I don’t know,” I say honestly.

“How can you not know?!”

I’m following a motherfucking butterfly.

“WHAT?!”

Did I say that out loud?

“Entire family killed in one night. Again.”

Elise and I watch the news as we eat breakfast.

“One suspect was apparently wearing stiletto heels.”

My clothes are in a trash bag upstairs.

“A strand of red hair found at the scene was determined to be from a plastic doll.”

The knife is hidden in the bearhead in my closet.

“No suspects have been named as of now.”

All known strong women with stiletto heels are now being watched by the suits. Allegations of a serial killer are all the rage in this whole new world.

Aside from the first day back at school, James and I are suspended for two days. We relish in the glory. Two rebels. Born away, joined together, obligated to revolt forever. Alone, under the moonlight we wait. High as kites, quiet rabbits, two tall boys.

“There’s more of those suits,” Jimbo said to me.

“I see,” I said.

Atop the roof of a stranger, we sit, perched like waiting predators. Lawn chairs out. Pass my spliff.

“What d’you think they’re here for?” I asked.

Jimbo shrugged. Looked ahead, looks ahead, I cannot tell if this happened earlier or if it’s happening right now and I’m really dreaming. He places his fingers around the rim of a Coke can, movements from my memory, and presses it to his lips. I’ve seen him do this before as well. Swish in his mouth. Spat it out. This is a memory.

“To watch us, I guess.”

My best friend is in the present, all the time. I move my fingers across the armrest, over my knee. Suit across the street, watching closely. Sensations, cold bitter wind. This isn’t right. When I’m with Jimbo, my mind is at rest. Tonight is strange.

“Do you ever feel like we don’t fit in?” I asked.

“Yes,” Jimbo says.

“It’s weird, isn’t it?”

“Very.”

“Have you ever wanted to cut somebody?”

Jimbo looks at me. Queer boy, he thinks. I’m not sure. Best friend of mine.

“Of course,” Jimbo says.